Sir Alan Rushton Battersby (CFF 1950-52) All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths, Up to 1959
FRS (4 March 1925 – 10 February 2018) was born in Leigh in Lancashire in 1925 and developed a fascination for chemistry while at school. At sixteen he joined the local electrical cable company to support the war effort while, in his spare time, studying by correspondence course combined with blitz-blighted journeys on Saturdays to Salford Technical College to do lab work. He won a scholarship to Manchester University where he became interested in how nature builds complex molecules. His academic career involved appointments at the Universities of St Andrews, Bristol and Liverpool until, in 1969, he moved to a professorship at the University of Cambridge where he stayed for the rest of his career. Whilst at St Andrews he was awarded a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship and studied at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York, and the University of Illinois. The three months of summer travel, then a required part of the fellowship, gave Sir Alan and his wife Margaret a life-long fondness of the States. Sir Alan was knighted in 1992 and has won numerous awards including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 2000 “in recognition of his pioneering work in elucidating the detailed biosynthetic pathways to all the major families of plant alkaloids. His approach, which stands as a paradigm for future biosynthetic studies on complex molecules, combines isolation work, structure determination, synthesis, isotopic labelling and spectroscopy, especially advanced NMR, as well as genetics and molecular biology. This spectacular research revealed the entire pathway to vitamin B12.”
Last updated: 18th November 2019
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Sir Hans Leo Kornberg (CFF 1953-55) All Harkness Stories, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths, Up to 1959
FRS arrived in Britain in 1939, aged 11, a refugee from Nazi Germany. After completing a PhD (Biochemistry) at the University of Sheffield, his Commonwealth Fund Fellowship took him to Yale and the Public Health Research Institute, NY, studying enzymology. At Sheffield, Kornberg made his first of many discoveries; using radioactive carbon isotopes he discovered the breakdown of urea in the gut was by bacterial action. He funded himself as a lab tech and cook, the latter relevant to the fellowship requirement to write on some aspect of American life during 3 month’s travel. Kornberg chose American regional cooking, and ate his way across 30 states, recalling “It was one of the most enjoyable periods of my life”. He returned to Oxford to work with his mentor, who had spotted talent in the 17 yr old lab technician, Nobel prize winner Sir Hans Krebs. As Professor of Biochemistry at Leicester and then Cambridge, he contributed considerably to the rapid development of the science of biochemistry, elected the first president of the Biochemical Society in 1990. He chaired the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution; the Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification; the Science Board of the Science Research council and was Governor of the Welcome Trust. As president of the British Academy of Science he campaigned to reverse the government’s cuts to scientific research. On retiring from Cambridge, 1995, he moved to the University of Boston, USA. Elected FRS in 1965, Kornberg was knighted in 1978.
Last updated: 31st March 2020
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Jan Morris (CFF 1953) All Harkness Stories, Humanities, Journalism, Broadcast, Films & TV, Up to 1959
CBE FRSL (d.2020), like many fellows of that era was already well travelled before the fellowship, having joined the army at 17 during WW2, followed by journalism as a foreign correspondent. A clever and inspired reporter, Jan was initially based in Cairo for the Arab news agency. There was also a role with the Times, including accompanying the first successful ascent of Mount Everest and being the first to release the news of success using encoded messages. Later with the Guardian she gained crucial evidence about French-Israeli collusion in the Suez crisis. After 10 years in journalism Jan decided to focus on her writing and there followed a stream of successful books; poetry, history, place and city studies (often referred to as travel books), novels, memoirs, essays and biographies, over 40 in total. She has received multiple awards for her writing, including a Lifetime Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing award in 2018; earlier winners were Michael Palin and Bill Bryson. However in an interview with BBC in 2016 she told fellow winner Michael Palin that she does not like to be described as a travel writer, as her books are not about movement and journeys; they are about places and people. Jan was published under her birth name, James, until 1972, when she undertook sex reassignment after transitioning from living as male to living as female. Her book “Conundrum” is a frank and engaging description of this part of her life. Her most recent publication “In my Mind’s Eye: A Thought Diary”, her first diary style writing, was published at the age of 90. A Welsh nationalist, she lives in North Wales with her lifelong partner and mother of her children, Elizabeth. (Jan wrote this in 2018. She passed away in 2020)
Last updated: 1st April 2021
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Sir Michael Atiyah (CFF 1955-56) All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths, Up to 1959
OM, FRS, FRSE, FMedsci, FAA, FREng studied at Princeton, Institute of Advanced Study, for his fellowship to which he later returned as Professor for three years (69-72). His academic career started in Cambridge (student and early academia), transferring to Oxford for more senior and leadership roles. In 1990 Michael returned to Cambridge to create and direct the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (90-96) and is now at the University of Edinburgh, where he has been Honorary Professor since 1997. Collaboration with others, many of whom he met in his fellowship year at Princeton, has been key to his work; with Hirzebruch he laid the foundation of topological K-theory and the Atiyah-Singer index theorem is widely used in counting the number of independent solutions to differential equations. Later work was inspired by theoretical physics leading to improvements in quantum field theory. Used to travel from an early age, born in London to Lebanese and Scottish parents, educated in Sudan, Cairo, Alexandria, and Manchester, he has travelled extensively. He has been elected to Royal Society equivalent organisations in many countries including America, Sweden, Ireland, Australia, India and Russia. Awarded over 30 Honorary degrees, Michael has also won numerous awards for his work, including the Fields medal in 1966 (for his work in developing K theory) and the Abel prize, jointly with Singer in 2004. Michael held leadership roles in many organisations, including being President of the London Mathematical Society (74-76), President of the Royal Society (90-95), Master of Trinity College (90-97) and Chancellor of the University of Leicester (95-05). An impressive educator Michael is responsible for inspiring generations of young mathematicians, many becoming prize winners in their own right. Michael was destined to be a mathematician and quotes “I started out by changing local currency into foreign currency everywhere I travelled as a child and ended up making money. That’s when my father realised that I would be a mathematician some day.” Michael’s wife Lily, from Edinburgh, was with him from his CFF until she passed away at the age of 90 in March 2018. They had 3 sons. (Sir Michael wrote this in May 2018. He passed away in 2019)
Last updated: 30th May 2018
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Professor David Gordon Wilson ((CFF 1955-57)) All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths, Up to 1959
is emeritus professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and the author of recently published Born, Blessed & Blitzed in Britain, but Battered by M.I.T. The book reflects on an adventure filled life and outlines his battles with university bureaucracy, from his time as a young engineer who refused to alter test results and later as he called out senior academics for plagiarism. Born and educated in Warwickshire, England, Dave first crossed the Atlantic in 1953, working his way to Canada in the engine room of a cargo boat. In 1955 he was awarded a post-doctoral Commonwealth-Fund fellowship for study and research at MIT and Harvard. After working in the turbine industry in Britain he taught for two years in Nigeria and worked briefly with the VSO (the British precursor of the Peace Corps) in the Cameroons. Before coming to MIT he was technical director and vice president of NREC. At MIT, Dave has taught engineering design, including turbo-machinery design, and applied thermodynamics, and supervised research into power-and-propulsion topics and design areas. His turbine-design text was bought by GE for its jet-engine staff. Since retiring in 1994 he has been interim head of the Office of Minority Education and faculty director of the MITES program, and co-founded Wilson TurboPower in 2001. Dave, a keen hiker and bicyclist, who designed a bicycle that won world speed records, has authored/co-authored 9 books.
Last updated: 19th January 2019
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Ian Hay Davison (CFF 1957-58) All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Humanities, Up to 1959
CBE FCA graduated from the LSE in 1953 and then qualified as a chartered accountant in 1956. Having taken third place in the national exam his former LSE tutor suggested he apply for a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship. Accompanied by his wife he set off for the University of Michigan. He was then 26 and took the prelims for a PhD in Accounting in the Business School in one year but never completed the thesis. This was followed by a two -month internship on computers on Wall Street and a wonderful three month tour of 40 of the then 48 States. Returning to the UK in 1959 he joined the infant UK firm of Arthur Andersen rising to managing partner in 1966. In 1983 at the prompting of the Governor of the Bank of England he left AA and for the next 17 years became a financial services regulator. His roles included CEO of Lloyd’s of London, Chairman of the Securities Review Committee in Hong Kong, ExecuChairman of National Mortgage Bank (a failed bank being run down by the Bank of England) and Chairman of the Securities Regulator in Dubai. He enjoyed other roles: a founding director of “the Independent”; Chairman of BHS, Habitat and Mothercare; Director of Cadbury Schweppes; Chairman of Sadler’s Wells and a director of the Royal Opera House. He retired in 2004 at the age of 73, but carried on as Chairman of Ruffer, the fund managers until 2011 when he was 80.
Last updated: 6th December 2018
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Ken Sargent (CFF 1957-58) All Harkness Stories, Environment, International Affairs, Up to 1959
, OBE, graduated in Forestry at Edinburgh University in 1945, with the Elizabeth Sinclair Irvine prize as best student and joined the Kenya Forest Department for 12 years. Working on a wide variety of field assignments, he became deeply interested in the role of forestry in the environment and its interrelationship with other sectors. His 1957 fellowship enabled him to study at Harvard University with Professor J.K. Galbraith and undertake extensive travel arranged by the US Forest Service. He returned in 1965 to present a key-note address on forest policy to the first Tropical Forestry Symposium. Ken moved on to a successful career in many countries linking forestry, land use and agricultural policies with national economic and social policy. His model for analysis of these issues was taken up by the World Bank for broader application in developing countries. In recognition of this success, Ken was presented with the prestigious B.R. Sen Award of FAO (1974), the first Englishman and the first Forester to receive this. In 1966 Ken was elected an Honorary Member of the Society of American Foresters, and was appointed an OBE in 1967. In retirement he became Treasurer then Chairman for a Housing Association. In 2012, at the age of 88, Ken privately published “Beyond the trees – a forester’s reminiscences of adventure, international travel and a fascinating career”. Ken died in October 2020 and is survived by his wife, Gwen, who travelled with him on his fellowship, and his two sons, Michael and Peter.
Last updated: 22nd March 2021
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Bamber Gascoigne (CFF 1958-59) All Harkness Stories, Humanities, Journalism, Broadcast, Films & TV, Up to 1959
FRSL is best known for his television role as chairman of University Challenge for twenty-five years (1962-1987). He can be thanked for introducing the following catchphrases into our daily language – “Your starter for ten” and “fingers on the buzzers”. Bamber was a Commonwealth Fund Fellow in 1958 where he spent a year studying playwriting at Yale. He ‘had already written a revue (which ran for nine months in London’s West End) while a student of English Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and on his return he became a theatre critic. Bamber has also been the author and presenter of many documentary history series and has published many books. His Encyclopedia of Britain covers all the best-known aspects of British history and culture. For the last fifteen years he has been writing a history of the world on the internet, HistoryWorld (www.historyworld.net). Bamber has been a Trustee of the National Gallery, Trustee of the Tate Gallery, member of the Council of the National Trust, and a director of the Royal Opera House. He is a patron of the Museum of Richmond. In 2014 he inherited a large country house dating back to the 16th Century, West Horsley Place. Soon after he received a proposal from Grange Park Opera to build an opera house close to the garden. Bamber and his wife Christina established the Mary Roxburghe Trust to restore the house and involve the public in many different activities there. To fund this, they donated to the charity the estate and all its assets. Grange Park Opera, with their magical new opera house in the woods, opened and completed their first season in 2017 to critical acclaim. (This was written in 2018. Bamber passed away in February 2022)
Last updated: 24th April 2022
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Dr William Plowden (CFF 1958-59) All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Politics & Public Services, Up to 1959
(d. 2010) saw his Commonwealth Fund Fellowship as liberating and transformative in the same way as reading history at Cambridge after two years National Service, or even more so. He spent it at the University of California Berkeley Institute of Political Science and Government, with Nelson Polsby. He shared a room, and indeed a car which meant they had the use of it for most of the year, with Tony Tanner (d.1998). Returning from his fellowship, William spent a year at The Economist before joining the Board of Trade where he was private secretary to Edward Heath. He left Whitehall to become a lecturer in the Government Department at LSE. While there he wrote his first book The Motor Car and Politics (1970). Invited by his former boss, now the PM, William became a founder member of the Central Policy Review Staff, CPRS, known as the Think Tank (1971 to 1977). After a brief spell as Under Secretary at the Department of Industry he headed the Royal Institute for Public Administration for 10 years from 1978. He was a visiting professor at LSE in the 1980s and again from 2002, a governor from 1992 and a member of the Council for several years. He was a member of the Harkness selection committee in the 1980s, and visited current fellows in their US placements, and as Director of the UK Harkness Fellowships in New York (1988-91) he led the redesign of the programme for the Commonwealth Fund, continuing to lead the programme back in the UK until 1998. He was a founder member of the HFA. For the rest of his working life, as a consultant to developing countries’ governments, William went on developing and disseminating his ideas about effective government originating in his Harkness Fellowship, as well as his life-long love of America.
Last updated: 24th May 2018
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Tony Tanner (CFF 1958–60) All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Humanities, Up to 1959
(d 1998) had a career as an eminent scholar of American literature which was born during his time as a Harkness fellow. Having studied English at Jesus College Cambridge, in 1958 he won a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship to Berkeley, California where he first encountered post-war American literature and culture. In 1960, he returned with a passion for American Literature, unusual in the UK at the time, especially in academia. His doctoral dissertation on wonder and naiveté in American literature, later published as a book, became the first on an American subject to be accepted by the Cambridge English faculty. He was appointed a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, where he taught and studied for 38 years until his untimely death from cancer in 1998. Professor Tanner’s teachings on the topic helped persuade Cambridge university to offer a master’s degree in American literature, and in 1989, he was appointed to its first chair in American literature. He wrote a comprehensive study of contemporary American fiction from the period 1950-1970 in City of Words, published in 1971. Tanner briefly took up a position at Johns Hopkins University, but returned to Kings, preferring life at Cambridge. Tanner did not abandon UK and European literature, publishing about the work of literary figures such as Goethe, Flaubert, Rousseau, Henry James, Jane Austen, Byron, Thomas Mann, John Ruskin and Marcel Proust. His final work was to write prefaces to each of Shakespeare’s plays for the new Everyman library. (Sources)
Last updated: 24th May 2018
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Prof Robert Cassen (CFF 1959-61) All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Higher Education, International Affairs, Up to 1959
OBE studied classics and philosophy at Oxford, and wanted to convert to economics – Harkness allowed him to do it. With a year in Berkeley and one in Harvard, he had the qualifications to start teaching development economics at the London School of Economics, simultaneously writing his thesis and getting his PhD from Harvard a little later. He taught at LSE, Sussex, and Oxford, and had years off working with the British aid programme on and in India; with the World Bank; and the staff of the Brandt Commission, the ‘Independent Commission on International Development Issues’. His academic best-seller was Does Aid Work?, written with a team of fellow economists. It was translated into several languages, and led to work with various development agencies. Years later he switched to education research. His last book, co-authored with two other researchers, was published in 2015, a research review mainly about England – Making a Difference in Education: What the evidence says. It taught him how small a part evidence plays in the making of English educational policy. Most recently he moved sideways again, working with a young choirmaster to produce a website about Renaissance Sacred Music, www.golden-age-music.com – launched in the summer of 2018. He says he owes so much to Harkness: his Fellowship opened the door to a life combining academe and practical involvement in the developing world. If there is anyone still around from the era of the Foundation that changed his life, he’d like to say a big Thank you.
Last updated: 18th November 2018
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Timothy Hornsby (HF 1961-63) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Politics & Public Services
CBE went straight from Oxford to his Harkness Fellowship in 1961, at Columbia, Harvard, and the Henry E Huntington Library in California , studying 17th-century political theory. His fellowship was extended for a further year, to enable him to take up a post as Assistant Professor of History at Birmingham Southern College. On his return, he returned to his old college at Oxford, Christ Church, as a Research Fellow and Tutor, and then joined the Civil Service where he held a number of senior posts in HM Treasury and the Department of Environment. Subsequently he became Director General of the Nature Conservancy Council, Chief Executive of the Royal Borough of Kingston, and Chief Executive of the National Lottery Charities Board. He now chairs two Boards, and is a non-executive director on four others, concerned with the arts, health care, and helping those at disadvantage.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Sir Alan Bailey (HF 1963-64) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Politics & Public Services
was working in the Treasury when he applied for a Harkness fellowship in 1963. He had recently been private secretary to Edward Boyle, who had meanwhile left politics and become chair of the Harkness selection board – indeed he knew that his chosen topic, how the American government employed its economists, was one of Edward Boyle’s interests, so that his success may have looked a bit like favouritism. He spent a fascinating year at Harvard and touring the whole United States (with his wife and two small children) – but worked quite hard on his report, which circulated for a time among top Treasury officials. On his return the old-style (pre-Fulton) ‘generalist’ Treasury put him in a pay division “for the good of his soul”, but he was able to use his exposure to early microeconomic theory and cost-benefit analysis in later Treasury postings, and finally as Permanent Secretary in the Department of Transport. He was awarded the KCB for his services in 1986. Since retiring in 1991 he has found various interesting part-time roles, as a non-executive Board member of London Transport and chair of London Transport Buses, and in voluntary organisations including locally in Greenwich, as well as chairing the Harkness Fellows Association in its early years. Sir Alan passed away in April 2023.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Baroness Patricia Hollis (HF 1963-64 ) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Politics & Public Services
(1941 to 2018) found that the Harkness Fellowship turned her life around. As her parents had both left school aged 12, she applied to Cambridge (UK) because she had heard of it, along with Oxford and LSE (as a trade unionist, her Dad had heard of Harold Laski!). Patricia got a First in history in 1962, and then a Harkness Fellowship to Berkeley, California to study sociology. Her newly acquired American boyfriend was active in the civil rights movement. They rode buses, picketed segregated restaurants (George Wallace, Alabama, “Turkey dinners 99c and guaranteed no n—–rs.”), and worked on voter registration in Mississippi. She heard Martin Luther King have a dream. After a second year at Columbia, New York, she came back to Nuffield College, Oxford to complete a D.Phil; which (along with her Harkness Fellow late husband, Martin) took them on to jobs at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, in 1967. In 1968 Patricia was elected to the local Council. She went on to become Dean of the School of English and American Studies as well as leader of Norwich City Council in the 1980s. She also served on the Regional health Authority, on English Heritage, the Press Council and as Chair of a local housing association. She is renowned as a successful campaigning politician who did her home work, used statistics to support her case and spoke common sense powerfully. In 1990 she was appointed to the Lords, and from 1997-2005 was Blair’s Lord’s Minister for DSS/DWP. Patricia is survived by two sons, a radio producer for Radio 4 (ex Fulbright); and the current Faber Poetry editor. (Story initially written by Patricia and later updated)
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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André Lévy-Lang (HF 1963 - 65) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
was invited with other young Europeans to attend a month long summer seminar, the ‘Salzburg Seminar in American Studies’, some time after graduating from Ecole Polytechnique in 1958. This probably led in 1963 to the Harkness Foundation offering him a fellowship . As he had always been interested in Finance and Economics, he and his wife took this opportunity, and he applied to Stanford to work on a PhD in these fields. After two wonderful years on campus, and back in France after completing his thesis, Andre discovered that his French and American degrees did not open the doors of the French financial establishment of the sixties, so he went back to an engineering career with Schlumberger. In 1974, the right door opened at last and he joined Compagnie Bancaire, a maverick banking group which pioneered modern retail finance in France. He became its CEO in 1982, then in 1990 the CEO of its major shareholder, Banque Paribas, an investment bank. In 1999, they were acquired by BNP to create BNPParibas, still the leading bank in Europe, and he retired. Andre’s third career, since 2000, has been as an advisor or mentor to various boards or executives, a teacher in Finance at Dauphine University and the founder and chairman of a research network, the Institut Louis Bachelier, which channels mostly private funds to over 40 research projects in Finance, Economics, Demography, Energy, Climate and Data, in the main French universities and graduate schools.
Last updated: 19th January 2021
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Tim O’Riordan (HF 1963 - 65) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Politics & Public Services, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
OBE DL FBA graduated in Geography from his home town University of Edinburgh. His undergraduate research explored why the small burns of East Lothian dried up every summer removing all of the richly diverse invertebrates. This extermination was due to excessive abstraction for the irrigation of potatoes, unimpeded by the lack of any regulation or pricing. He received a MS in water resources management from Cornell, leaving sufficient time to drive to Berkeley to read natural resources management. Tim returned to Kings College Cambridge where he divided his time between studying the governance of the Norfolk Broads for his PhD and playing classical double bass. He spent seven years in Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and returned to the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. He served on the Broads Authority for 20 years, sat on the Dow Chemical Sustainability Board, advised Asda and Eastern Electricity, and was a faculty member of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Tim received the awards of Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Norfolk, a Fellowship of the British Academy, and an OBE. He is currently President of CPRE Norfolk and the Norfolk Association of Local Councils where he is actively involved with the localisation of sustainability in the County.
Last updated: 19th January 2021
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Roy Williams (HF 1963-64) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Politics & Public Services
CB graduated in 1956 with a degree in economics from Liverpool University and was successful in the Civil Service Administrative Class competition in the same year. He joined the then Ministry of Power and served in Divisions responsible for different nationalised industries. He was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in 1963 which he spent at the University of Chicago and later University of California (Berkeley) researching the American approach to regulating public utilities. In the US these are mostly privately owned in contrast to the UK where at that time, they were in public ownership. On his return to the UK he served as Principal Private Secretary to successive Secretaries if State for Industry, including Tony Benn during the 1975 EEC referendum, and Eric Varley, and then headed the Division responsible for the Post Office and telecommunications. Later, as a Deputy Secretary (Director General), he was responsible for international trade policy, DTI relations with the EEC (now EU) and the creation of the EEC single market. He subsequently moved to take responsibility for industrial policy in DTI, which involved the 1980’s programme of privatising state owned industries. His time in the US studying the American regulatory approach was highly relevant at this time. His last Civil Service post gave him responsibility for regional policy, the promotion of enterprise and innovation and inward investment. He retired in 1993 from when he chaired the European Eureka programme, which is designed to encourage collaboration in R and D between European enterprises, was a member of the Design Council and a Trustee of various Charities, including chairing a charity caring for disabled children. He was made a Companion of the Bath (CB) in 1988.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Professor David Lodge (HF 1964-65) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Humanities
CBE, author and literary critic, graduated from University College London with a BA in 1955, followed (after National Service in the Army) by an MA in 1959. Awarded a Harkness Fellowship in 1964, he went with his family to the United States where he attended Brown University to study American Literature and then travelled across America to California. He described the experience in his memoir Quite A Good Time To be Born (2015) as “an annus mirabilis”. David Lodge is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham where he taught from 1960 to 1987, and still lives in that city. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969 and Henfield Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia in 1977. His time in academia gave him a rich source of inspiration for a series of novels which satirize university life, two of which, Small World (1984) and Nice Work (1988) were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another major theme in his fiction is Roman Catholicism. How Far Can You Go?(1980) published in the USA as Souls & Bodies, follows the lives of a group of English Catholics through a period of upheaval in the Church. He has also written television screenplays and stage plays and a number of distinguished books of criticism, including The Modes of Modern Writing (1977) and Consciousness and the Novel (2002). David holds several honorary degrees and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts and des Letters. He was appointed CBE in 1998 for services to literature.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Sir Colin Blakemore (HF 1965-67) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Higher Education, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
, after studying medical sciences at Cambridge, won a Harkness Fellowship to go to the University of California at Berkeley, where he worked with Horace Barlow, a leading British neurophysiologist. What was meant to be a single year turned into just over 2 years and a PhD; and it changed the direction of Colin’s career. He gave up clinical medicine and returned to teach at Cambridge. He has worked on many aspects of vision and brain development, and was one of the first to demonstrate the importance of ‘plasticity’ in the brain. In 1979, he moved to the Waynflete Chair of Physiology in Oxford, where he also directed the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience. From 2003-7 he was Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council, and in 2012 he moved to a personal Professorship in the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where he collaborates with art historians and artists, including David Hockney and Patrick Hughes, in research on visual perception. He has 10 honorary degrees and is a member of 12 academies, including the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences and Academia Europaea. In 2014 he was knighted for service to scientific research, policy and outreach. He was the youngest person to give the BBC Reith Lectures. He has given the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, he has made nearly 1,000 broadcasts (including a 13-part series for BBC television), and he writes for national and international media. (This was written in 2018. Sir Colin passed away in June 2022) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Blakemore
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Edgar Anderson (HF 1966-68) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
is a Scot (B.Sc., Ph.D., D.Sc., Glasgow University) who was a Salters’ Fellow at the University of Strasbourg when he applied for a Harkness Fellowship. He worked at the Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology, ‘CalTech’, Pasadena, Southern California on ‘The Conformational Dynamics of Simple Organic Molecules using NMR Spectroscopy’. He continued in this same broad field on his return to Britain as successively, a Ramsay Fellow, a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and finally Professor of Organic Chemistry at University College London. He retired in 2005 having published over 120 papers in leading Chemical Journals, and has a Hirsch Index of 32. He was the Crabtree Orator in 2007 and President of the Crabtree Foundation in 2017-8. He met Eleanor Colwell, a Canadian on a short visit to Caltech, towards the end of his time there. They were married in 1970 and have lived in the same house in Rickmansworth since that time. They have two daughters and three grandchildren.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Malcolm Dean (HF 1966-68) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Journalism, Broadcast, Films & TV, Politics & Public Services
was no stranger to employment and travel when he started his Harkness Fellowship. He was trained as a journalist by Kemsley weekly newspapers for four years, and spent a further three working his way around the world reporting in Canada, the West Indies, Australia, and South East Asia. On his return in 1964, he joined Reuters before taking up a fellowship at Ruskin College, Oxford. The first year of his Harkness Fellowship was in Chicago, the second working in Congress as a speechwriter to a senator and then a congressman. Joining the Guardian in 1969, he worked his way up from roving reporter to social affairs leader-writer and then associate editor. He launched the paper’s hugely successful weekly Society section in 1979, which he edited for most of its 21 years, covering all aspects of social policy. He was a special adviser to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Security in the last year of the 1974-79 Labour government, served on more than a dozen national social policy working parties, chaired a Joseph Rowntree Foundation commission on older people, and was a trustee of six charities, including a founding trustee of the Young Foundation Malcolm retired from the Guardian in 2006 to take up a fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, for 11 years. He spent the first two years researching and writing his book ‘Democracy under Attack: How the Media Distort Policy and Politics’.
Last updated: 8th February 2022
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Professor Christopher Kendall (HF 1966 - 68) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Higher Education, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
studied in Austin, Texas. Some 400 applied for Harkness Fellowships that year, and he was among the 40 who were selected for interviews for 25 Fellowships. Knowing the names of the committee he identified their professions and prepared for the interview by guessing at the style of questions he might be asked. He recalls that the committee faced him centred around the chairman across a long oak table. Chris was on an isolated single chair opposite, and on the table in front of him was a slip of paper with the names of those facing him. When questioned, his fingers and eyes on the paper, he knew the questioner, and framed his answers accordingly. The interview became a competition among some of the committee members to ask the best questions. His tactics, recognized by the committee, led them to enjoy challenging him. For example one of them proposed that as a geologist he might prefer a map on his wall but he replied, “No, I would prefer a Goya”. The committee then spent time discussing a current exhibition of Goya. He was accepted as a Fellow and spent his two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at UT Texas working with Prof. Folk on the Geology of West Texas. For details of the remainder of his eclectic career in academia and the oil industry as a geologist; see here.
Last updated: 20th September 2021
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Nicholas Falk (HF 1967-69) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Creative Arts, Design & Architecture, Economics, Finance & Business, International Affairs
worked on product development for Ford to learn about successful multi-national companies, after doing PPE at Oxford. His thought that there must be better management techniques to explain why the UK economy lagged behind the USA, took him to Stanford Business School in California. However, he found it was the culture that explained business success at the expense of hollowing out of cities. Actively involved in student politics, he helped the spin off of Stanford Research Institute from the university to cut links with the Defence Department. Returning with an MBA, he spent three years at McKinsey. This was followed by a doctorate at the London School of Economics on how towns and cities develop; an action research project in Rotherhithe in London’s Docklands, tested out ideas for reusing old industrial buildings inspired by what he had seen in San Francisco. Always keen to link academic research to practical applications, in 1976 he founded URBED (Urban and Economic Development), which offers practical solutions to urban regeneration and local economic development. He recently published a report on the application of smart city principles to London. In 2014 URBED won the Wolfson Economics Prize for showing how to build garden cities that were visionary, viable and popular. He is currently focusing on two projects: Oxford Futures on how to double the size of the city maintaining its position as a knowledge hub and applying ‘smarter urbanisation’ principles to the growth of medium sized cities in Tamil Nadu, India.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Nigel Hall (HF 1967-69) 1960s, All Harkness Stories, Creative Arts, Design & Architecture
RA was in his final year at the Royal College of Art when he successfully applied for a Harkness Fellowship. Interested in American art and deserts, he wanted to be based in a city relatively close to Mojave Desert. His fellowship to study sculpture took him to LA (1967-69), and although formally connected to UCLA, he spent much of his time based in his studio in East LA, having driven across the country from New York. In fact, the first time he went to UCLA was for the exhibition of British painting and sculpture held at their gallery, in which he participated. During his time in LA he held a solo show at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery. This lead directly to further exhibitions at Robert Elkon Gallery in New York, a gallery in Germany and his first London gallery which was interested in West Coast artists. On his return to UK, he set up a studio in London and started teaching part-time at the Royal College of Art, later becoming principal lecturer in charge of MA sculpture at Chelsea School of Art. He has held numerous solo exhibitions in Europe, America, Asia and Australia and his work, both sculpture and drawings is held by many public collections around the world including the Tate in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum and many more. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 2003 and awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts London in 2017.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Sir David Wallace (HF 1970-72) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
CBE FRS FREng FRSE Following undergraduate and postgraduate study at the University of Edinburgh, David continued his research in theoretical physics at Princeton University. In 1972 he was appointed lecturer in the Physics Department at the University of Southampton. In 1979 he returned to the University of Edinburgh as Tait Professor of Mathematical Physics, and Director of Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre. He was Vice-Chancellor at Loughborough University for 12 years, from 1994, and moved to Cambridge in 2006, as NM Rothschild & Sons Professor of Mathematical Sciences & Director of the Isaac Newton Institute to 2011, and as Master of Churchill College to 2014, retiring then to Scotland. He has held many honorary positions in Academies and Learned Societies, and on Trusts and Foundations, and served as a non-executive director in a number of companies. He is currently a member of Court (the Governing Body) of the University of St Andrews, a trustee of the Bill McLaren Foundation and chairs the Board of the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences. He was awarded a CBE for services to parallel computing in 1996, and knighted in 2004 for services to UK science, technology and engineering. In 1995 he ran the London Marathon, raising £8000 for Sports Aid Foundation and Loughborough Sports Scholarships. His time of just under four hours is surely the slowest ever in a Loughborough vest. He retired to Scotland in 2014 with his wife Elizabeth. They have one daughter, Sara. https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/people/view/david-wallace/
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Michael Wise (HF 1970 - 72) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
, first dentist to be awarded the Fellowship, obtained an M.Sc.D. in Fixed and Removable Prosthodontics at Indiana University. After a period in academia, he developed his own team in private practice to assess and measure the outcomes of an integrated approach to complex dental restorative treatment. Michael was a Visiting Professor at The Eastman Dental Institute, UCL, GDC recognised as a Specialist in Restorative Dentistry and in Oral Surgery, a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons, an invited member of The American Academy of Restorative Dentistry and The American College of Dentists, and a past President of The American Dental Society of Europe. In 1977 he started the first one day a month literature based courses, in his practice for up to 20 dentists, a model now standard in dentistry. At retirement he was leading five groups, two had been with him for over 30 years. Lecturing nationally and internationally, Michael is the author of many publications including a textbook in 1995 “Failure in the Restored Dentition : Management and Treatment”; recognized by the BDA library in its 100th year as one of the most influential books in dentistry. As a recipient of a kidney transplant in 2010 (after sepsis) he became active in projects to improve the treatment of patients with acute kidney injury. In 2017 he published “On The Toss of a Coin“ about his experiences of critical illness. Married to Priscilla, a psychotherapist, for 52 years, they have three sons and five grandchildren.
Last updated: 14th March 2021
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David Broadhurst (HF 1971-73) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
had the great fortune to be a Harkness fellow at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center when physicists were discovering the fundamental theories of the strong and weak interactions of quarks and leptons. This was followed by a Royal Society fellowship at CERN in Geneva and a fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford. David’s Harkness fellowship provided the opportunity to visit more than 40 of the United States and three quarters of its national parks. He met Margaret in Fern Canyon, Humboldt County, California and they wed in Coventry in 1975, by which time David was intensively engaged in teaching physics and mathematics to students of the Open University. He continued to combine research and teaching until his retirement from a readership in 2013, since when he has enjoyed frequent invitations to conferences and workshops on quantum field theory and the exquisite mathematics that it entails. He continues to be amazed by “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” and lives in hope of seeing an eventual proof of the Broadhurst-Kreimer conjecture on multiple zeta values. A formula discovered by David was inscribed on the bronze statue awarded to Andrew Wiles by the Clay Mathematical Institute to celebrate the proof of Fermat’s last theorem. David served for more than 30 years as a governor of a primary school that seeks to combine sound education with human values. When in need of solace he turns to Bach and to his grandchildren.
Last updated: 25th October 2018
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Peter Jenkins (HF 1971-73) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, International Affairs, Politics & Public Services
CMG studied Classics at Cambridge. He was offered a place in the Diplomatic Service in 1971 but obtained a two-year deferral to be able to enrol at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Science on a Harkness Fellowship. Those two years at Harvard, where he acted in Classical Greek plays at the Loeb Theatre, and a summer spent on a 14,000-mile tour of the United States, in the company of two other Fellows, Bruno Weymuller and John Halliday, led indirectly to Sir Nicholas Henderson choosing him to be his Private Secretary during the closing stages of his term as UK Ambassador to the United States, which coincided with the 1982 Falklands War. They also equipped him to take a dispassionate view of US policies and practices in the governing bodies of the World Trade Organisation and International Atomic Energy Agency, where Peter represented the UK. And his study of Persian while at Harvard came in useful during the last years of his 33-year diplomatic career, since he found himself having to deal with some of the consequences of international concern over Iran’s nuclear programme. In retirement Peter has retained an interest in that issue, and more generally in international nuclear problems; and, as an advocate of diplomacy, has written on these subjects for US blog-sites and newspapers.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Bruno Weymuller (HF 1971-72) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business
was a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines de Paris when he awarded a French Harkness Fellowship. It took him to the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he obtained a Master of Science. Robert Solow supervised his thesis, on “Control theory and macroeconomic consequences”. Back in France he joined in the civil service. In 1978 he was appointed to the Cabinet of the Prime Minister, Raymond Barre, as counselor for Industry and Scientific Research. In 1981, he moved to the international oil major Elf Aquitaine (now Total). There he occupied different management positions in the Upstream and Finance Divisions, ending as executive vice-president for strategy and risk assessment, and a member of the Group Executive Committee. For his various contacts in industrial and financial circles in the United States, over many years, he benefited greatly from the experience he had acquired as a student at MIT and travelling from coast to coast during the summer of 1972, with two English Fellows, both still very good friends. He remains deeply grateful to the Foundation for this exceptional transatlantic opportunity. Now retired, he is, inter alia, member of the bureau of the association “Amis du musée franco-américain de Blérancourt”. This museum, located in the former property of Anne Morgan, daughter of J.P. Morgan, pays tribute to her support for France during the First World War in the form of a medical infrastructure to help the injured, and after 1918 in the form of a decisive contribution to the reconstruction of villages neighbouring Blérancourt. Bruno’s Fellowship experience encouraged his elder son, Charles Henri, to study for a PhD in economics at Harvard, partly thanks to which he now works as an adviser to the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Dr Stephen Potter (HF 1973-75) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
undertook post-doc studies in Physical Organic Chemistry at Yale University with Professor Jerry Berson. He recalls an amusing and challenging interview involving Alistair Burnett, Thea Musgrave and the Vice Chancellor of Manchester University after his doctorate at Sheffield. Stephen thoroughly enjoyed his time living in Saybrook College as a Freshman Counsellor, meeting Paul Newman, Dick Cavett, Burt Shevelove and Wayne Sleep during the Henning’s Thursday cocktails and visiting all the regions of the US and many parts of Canada during his 3 month trip. He has kept some very good friends from his time on the East Coast. Following a subsequent Salters’ Fellowship at Cambridge he has had a very varied career in a wide variety of industries in the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Dubai and, latterly in Sweden. Currently he is working with a couple of companies, Iprova SA, a Swiss / UK scale-up that is the World-leading company in data-driven invention and a start-up that his wife, Kerstin, is running, Visual Metaphors at Work AB. Kerstin and Stephen have four children, one working in digital advertising in New York, one a fine artist being looked after by galleries in Dusseldorf and London, one a Senior Colour and Materials Designer for McLaren Automotive and the fourth helping in VMaW. Peter has kept in touch with Didier Kessler, who was at Stanford during his time as a Fellow, currently living in Switzerland. Keen to connect with any other Fellows of his vintage, his Linked-In profile is https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-potter-029a6/.
Last updated: 1st November 2021
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Sir Graeme Catto (HF 1975-77) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Higher Education
was a lecturer in medicine at the University of Aberdeen, had acquired membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians (UK) and was completing an MD thesis when he was awarded the fellowship to study medicine and transplant immunology in Boston, Massachusetts, based at Harvard University and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. After two years, Graeme, his wife and two young children, returned to Aberdeen where he was promoted to Senior Lecturer and appointed honorary consultant physician/ nephrologist to the local health board. His clinical and research work went well and promotion to reader, professor, dean and vice-principal ensued. He became medical director of the teaching hospital, a member of an MRC grants committee and chairman of a large independent school. As a member of the General Medical Council, he chaired the Education Committee before becoming President at a time of some turbulence for the organisation and the medical profession. At the turn of the millennium, Graeme Catto was appointed Vice-Principal at King’s College London, Dean of the Guy’s, King’s College and St Thomas’ Hospitals Medical and Dental Schools and Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of London. He was a founder member and Treasurer of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Qatar Science & Technology Park, Caribbean Accreditation Authority and Qatar Council for Healthcare Professionals. Knighted in 2002 for services to medicine and medical education, Graeme Catto has been awarded a number of honorary degrees and fellowships. Retired from practice, he continues to support medical education initiatives in the UK and abroad.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Professor Aldwyn Cooper (HF 1975-76) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Journalism, Broadcast, Films & TV
was the demonstrator in experimental Psychology at Bristol University completing his PhD in December 1974. He applied for the fellowship to continue his research with the world leaders in his field in order to pursue a research career in human memory. His fellowship was at Stanford University, California, for psychology, and the University of California at Berkeley for the study of statistics. The academic experience at Stanford led Aldwyn to abandon his chosen research field and he almost resigned the fellowship to return to the UK. A three day visit from one of the Harkness committee persuaded him to remain and to learn more about technical and social developments in the United States. Taking this advice, he remained for his full term. This period gave him the phenomenal opportunity to meet and work with leaders in the developing field of micro computer technology and its application to education. On his return, Aldwyn was a leader of the team developing computer based education at the Open University. As Managing Director of Henley Distance learning, he initiated the first distance learning MBA in the UK, at Henley, then a world top ten business school. He ran a successful television production company for ten years. He moved to be PVC at the University of Glamorgan and led a substantial eLearning scheme. In 2007, he moved to Regent’s College in London where he led the acquisition of Degree Awarding Powers and University title and where he is currently Vice Chancellor. Professor Cooper sits on several national committees in Higher Education, has been a Governor of a large Further Education College and a large comprehensive school, and is now a commissioner of the Crown Estates Paving Commission. (Aldwyn wrote this in 2018. He passed away in 2021.)
Last updated: 5th April 2021
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Dr Edwina Moreton (HF 1976-78) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, International Affairs, Journalism, Broadcast, Films & TV
OBE was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for International Studies, MIT, collaborating on projects and publications at both MIT and Harvard on European security and east-west relations. Among many other things, she also learned how to calculate the kill probability of a ballistic missile re-entry vehicle on her (ladies’) slide-rule. Her Harkness Fellowship built on a BA in German and Russian (Bradford), an MSc in Political Science (Strathclyde) and a PhD on Soviet Studies (Glasgow). On her return to the UK she taught at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, before joining The Economist, where she worked for 30 years. As the paper’s Diplomatic Editor, she wrote on a wide range of security issues, from arms control, non-proliferation, trans-Atlantic relations and Asian security, to the UN, international justice and human rights. Boards and councils served on have included the UK Know-How Fund, Chatham House, the IISS and Wilton Park, as well as serving as a trustee and director of VERTIC, an NGO involved in treaty verification. She was made OBE by Queen Elizabeth and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Birmingham. She is currently an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, an advisory council member of the McDonald Centre, Oxford, and serves on the European Advisory Group of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She served as Master of the Worshipful Company of World Traders, City of London, 2018-19.
Last updated: 17th May 2021
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James Bathurst (HF 1977-79) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Environment, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
was encouraged to apply for a fellowship by a previous HF while a PhD student. The fellowship allowed him to undertake post-doctoral research on mountain river hydraulics at Colorado State University (CSU), Fort Collins. An immediate outcome of his fellowship was the co-founding, together with colleagues from CSU and the UK, of what has become an internationally recognized programme of workshops on Gravel-bed Rivers that have been held every five years since 1980. In 1979 James joined the then Natural Environment Research Council’s Institute of Hydrology at Wallingford, Oxfordshire, (now the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) and became part of a European collaboration to develop an advanced river catchment model (the Système Hydrologique Européen) for use in predicting the impacts of climate and land use change. James also continued his rivers research through a collaboration with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. He was seconded to a research unit at Newcastle University in 1985, and subsequently joined the University as a staff member in 1992. While there, he carried out technology transfer projects for the catchment model in India and Chile and applications to Mediterranean desertification, landslide hazard and forest impacts on floods in Latin America. James acquired his knowledge of landslides during a Churchill Fellowship visit to New Zealand in 1990. Most recently he has worked with colleagues in Chile on the impact of forests on floods, an occupation he continues following his retirement from Newcastle University in 2020 as Reader in Erosion and Sediment Transport.
Last updated: 14th March 2021
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Paul Calthrop (HF 1977-79) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business
: Paul retired as a director of Bain & Company, management consultants, in 2012. He joined them in 1979 from Stanford Graduate School of Business where, thanks to the generosity of the Harkness Foundation, he had completed a Masters in Business Administration. Prior to Stanford, Paul had qualified as a chartered accountant in London. This was the time of the miners’ strike, three day week, pay freeze, and IMF rescue of sterling, which all helped persuade Paul of the importance of strategic thinking as applied to businesses and economies. At Stanford he became aware of the then-emerging field of business strategy. He joined Bain and worked directly with the founders. There were fifty people in the firm when he started; approximately ten thousand when he retired. His work took him from Boston to London to Sydney to Zurich to Melbourne and his clients took him all over the world. Paul, acting in a personal capacity with several Bain partners, created Workplace Giving Australia, which to date has raised more than $250M of new funding for social organisations. He also helped create the Centre for Social Impact, a university research organisation focused on raising community capacity. Paul left Bain for a period to work in private equity, but returned, having proven to himself that he did not enjoy the process of buying and selling businesses. He and his wife, Susan, now live in Queensland, Australia, where Paul would be happy if he never saw the inside of another plane.
Last updated: 22nd March 2021
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Cataldo Louis Cammarata (HF 1977 - 78) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Law & Criminal Justice
graduated in English and American literature before deciding to pursue a legal career. He graduated from Aix-en-Provence law school and joined the French Bar in 1976. While taking the Bar exam, Cataldo decided to apply for post graduate studies at a US university and was admitted to the Harvard Law School. But it was the award of a Harkness Fellowship that allowed his dream to be fulfilled. The Harkness support changed his cultural approach and professional career. Cataldo’s exposure to American culture and high educational standards made him realize his future would be unmistakably different to the one he had imagined. It allowed him to consider a wider, international frontier beyond his previous European ambitions. After travelling throughout the United States following his graduation from Harvard, Cataldo returned to Paris and rejoined the Bar where he is still practicing. He lectured for over ten years at both the Sorbonne and Aix-en-Provence law schools. Although a staunch Anglophile, Cataldo says he would never have made it practicing at international level had he not been awarded a Harkness Fellowship. Currently, he practices in Paris at Squadra Avocats, a law firm he founded in 2004 and which houses a corporate international full-service practice.
Last updated: 5th May 2021
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Koen Lenaerts (HF 1977 - 79) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Law & Criminal Justice
was born in 1954 in Mortsel, Belgium. He obtained his law degree in 1977 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium). With the award of a Harkness Fellowship in the same year, he continued his studies at Harvard University where he obtained a Master of Laws in 1978 and a Master in Public Administration in 1979. Returning to the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven he became a Doctor of Law in 1982 and started first as a lecturer and then a professor of European law in 1983. He also taught at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium) from 1984 to 1989, and at Harvard Law School as a visiting professor in 1989. Mr Lenaerts’ career at the Court of Justice began when he became legal secretary (law clerk) to Judge René Joliet, a post he occupied from 1984 to 1985, before practising law at the Brussels Bar from 1986 to 1989. He was appointed judge at the Court of First Instance of the European Communities on 25th September 1989, the first day of this newly created court. He served on this Court for more than 14 years before being appointed judge at the Court of Justice in 2003. Mr. Lenaerts was elected by his peers as President of Chamber for two successive mandates from 2006 to 2012 and then as Vice-President of the Court of Justice in 2012. He was elected President of the Court of Justice in 2015, a post he occupies to this day.
Last updated: 5th May 2021
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Anthony Long (HF 1977-79)) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Environment, Politics & Public Services, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
studied how controversial UK land use policy conflicts at that time, particularly new motorways, might be handled differently in federal government systems. Catapulted from the planning department in the remote Colne Town Hall on the edge of the Pennines to the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC, he joined the Congressional Fellowship Programme of the American Political Science Association working first for Senator John Culver (D-Iowa) and then Representative Les AuCoin (D-Oregon). In his second year, he joined AuCoin’s successful 1978 electoral campaign in Oregon, followed by six months assisting an unusual majority coalition in the State Legislature of New Mexico. Returning to the UK, he joined the Council for the Protection of Rural England working on many nationally significant land use planning controversies. After a short research tenure in Paris in 1986, Anthony joined the staff of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the UK. In 1989 he established and led a dedicated WWF policy office in Brussels to influence EU environmental policy and legislation, a role he continued to undertake until his retirement in 2015 He has published several articles on environmental lobbying and was visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. He maintained close links with the US through his 10-year membership of the Sustainability Advisory Council of the Dow Chemical Company in Michigan. Continuing to reside in Brussels, Anthony advises local, national and international non-governmental and advocacy organisations, occasionally teaches environmental politics and is a Trustee of the Andrew Lees Trust-UK. (Tony wrote this in 2020. He passed away in February 2022.)
Last updated: 20th February 2022
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Sara Nathan (HF1977-79) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Humanities, Journalism, Broadcast, Films & TV, Politics & Public Services
OBE went straight to Stanford University the term after graduating in History from New Hall, Cambridge, the only woman awarded a fellowship in 1977. Her first year studying for an MA in History showed her that she was going to be the world’s worst academic historian. In the second year, she studied Broadcast Communication – unavailable in the UK then. This persuaded the BBC to employ her as a News Trainee in 1980. She progressed to roles as a producer in the TV newsroom, output editor for Breakfast and Newsnight, and film-maker for the Money Programme. She helped launch Radio 5Live, becoming the Editor of the morning programme. Meanwhile, she had crashed a Harkness reunion gathering and met Malcolm Singer (HF 1980-82). They married in 1984, have two grown-up children and nearly a grandson. In 1995, she was appointed Editor, Channel 4 News: the first woman to edit a network news programme. In 1998, Sara left daily news and went plural, filling up to six part-time roles at a time including some journalism. She has been on a number of boards including Ofcom, the Judicial Appointments Commission and the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority. She now chairs tribunals for the Nursing & Midwifery Council, is a Senior Hearings Manager back at the BBC and, most often, a trustee, host and volunteer with Refugees At Home: a charity she co-founded in 2015 to match destitute asylum-seekers and refugees with generous hosts who have spare rooms.
Last updated: 13th March 2019
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David Soskin (HF 1977-79) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Law & Criminal Justice
was from an early age interested in a business career. Following a First Class Honours degree in Modern History from Magdalen College, Oxford, and a stint at an American commercial bank, he was awarded a Fellowship to study at the Harvard Business School. In 1984, after several years as management consultant, David was appointed Director of Corporate Planning for Redland PLC, a FTSE 100 company. In 1989, he left to start his first entrepreneurial venture, Asquith Court Schools which became the UK’s largest independent nursery school company. In 2000, David led a management buy-in of Cheapflights, the first travel flight price comparison business website and spent eight years as CEO and another six as a board member during which time Cheapflights purchased Momondo and became one of the world’s largest travel search companies. In 2017, Cheapflights/Momondo was acquired by the Bookings Holdings (Priceline). In 2006 David co-founded HOWZAT Partners, a Venture Capital company which invests in early- stage digital businesses globally. It has a portfolio of sixty companies. David took time out of his commercial career to work for the Prime Minister in the Number 10 Policy Unit where he advised John Major on law and order and welfare policies. David retains his interest in politics and supported the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum. David’s philanthropic activities include his support for City Year, a leading youth and education charity, the Chichester Festival Theatre and the American Civil War Trust where he is a Regimental Color Bearer.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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David Walker (HF 1977-79) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Journalism, Broadcast, Films & TV, Politics & Public Services
was senior reporter for The Times Higher Education Supplement when he applied for a Harkness Fellowship, in 1977 — a decision precipitated by voters in the Holborn ward who chose not to favour his candidacy for Camden Council. Interested in lobbying, and the influence of professional associations on public policymaking, as an HF David joined the Congressional Fellowship program, and spent wonderful nine months in Washington DC, working in both the House and Senate as a staffer. The second half of his fellowship was spent at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley where he began work on what became Media Made in California, cowritten with Jeremy Tunstall and published by Oxford in 1981. On his return, just after the May 1979 election, David joined the staff of The Economist and pursued a career in journalism, for The Times, The Independent, the BBC and the Guardian, returning to Berkeley for a sabbatical and feeding insights from his time in Congress into Sources Close to the Prime Minister (with Peter Hennessy, 1984) and The Times Guide to the New British State (1995). David left journalism to become managing director, public reporting at the Audit Commission and is now deputy chair of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, chair of Understanding Society, a member of the ethics and governance council of UK Biobank and co author with Polly Toynbee of Unjust Rewards, The Verdict and Dismembered.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Tom Hayhoe (HF 1978-80) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Health & Social Care, Politics & Public Services
is chairman at West London NHS Trust which, as well as providing mental health services in west London, operates Broadmoor Hospital. Prior this appointment he served as chairman of West Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust. He attended Stanford Graduate School of Business as a Harkness Fellow, following a year as President of Cambridge Students Union. On returning from his Harkness Fellowship he worked for McKinsey & Company and then WH Smith before establishing the Brackenbury Group retail consultancy (subsequently The Chambers) and chairing the board of Gamestation, at the time the UK’s second largest video game retailer. During his MBA studies he took a course in health economics and policy which lead to him helping develop the health and social care policies of the Social Democratic Party (for whom he stood for parliament in the 1987 general election), taking a series of non-executive roles in the NHS starting in 1985, and ultimately being appointed to his current role. Tom is a keen offshore sailor and a former vice commodore of the Royal Ocean Racing Club. He is a former trustee and chair of the finance committee of Versus Arthritis.
Last updated: 15th November 2021
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Professor Mark Mayer (HF 1980-82) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
chose a Fellowship which allowed him to train in laboratories in the US that were using techniques in ion channel biophysics not widely available in the UK. Most importantly, the Fellowship gave him the freedom to choose the laboratories that hosted him and to move between labs as his experience grew. As a result, he acquired new skills, leading to a series of studies that he pursued for the rest of his career and to his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Mark’s career focused on analysis of excitatory neurotransmitter receptors in the brain, initially using electrophysiological techniques, with which he discovered that NMDA receptors were calcium permeable ion channels, flux through which varied with membrane potential due to block by extracellular Magnesium. This mechanism forms a coincidence detector that acts as a gate triggering synaptic plasticity. Later he used X-ray diffraction and cryo-electron microscopy to study the structure of glutamate receptors, establishing mechanisms for subtype selective binding of ligands, allosteric modulation, and how desensitization occurs. This work furthers our understanding of a wide range of neurological disorders. Finding limited biomedical research funding opportunities in the UK on his return to London in 1982 led to Mark joining the brain drain and moving to the NIH. Subsequent emergence of the Wellcome Trust changed this, but by then he felt it was too disruptive to return home. Today, the UK is a vibrant place for biomedical research, and Mark often visits for academic collaborations.
Last updated: 29th October 2019
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Dr Nigel Croft (HF 1981-82) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
is a world authority on quality management. After receiving his PhD in metallurgy from Sheffield University, Nigel spent his Harkness Fellowship conducting post-doctoral research at UC Berkeley, marking the beginning of his transformation from a “South Yorkshire lad” to a “Citizen of the world”. After completing his fellowship, he married Naila Diniz (also a PhD metallurgist) and emigrated to Brazil, becoming a Brazilian citizen in 1999. Over the years, Nigel has been actively involved in a range of global quality and sustainability initiatives, and from 2010 to 2018 he chaired the ISO technical subcommittee responsible for the ISO 9001 quality management standard. He has served as non-executive board member of a number of organizations around the world, including the Chartered Quality Institute (London), Social Accountability Accreditation Services (New York), and Fairtrade International’s certification body (FLOCERT) in Bonn. He is a consultant for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and Adjunct Professor of Quality Management at the University of Northern Malaysia. Nigel’s links with the US and the UK continue to be strong – in 2017 he was awarded the American Society for Quality’s Freund-Marquardt medal, “For his passion, dedication and leadership in the application of quality management” and in 2018 an Honorary (“Lifetime Achievement”) Award from the Chartered Quality Institute
Last updated: 18th April 2019
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Katrina Porteous (HF 1982-84) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Creative Arts, Design & Architecture, Humanities
, poet, grew up near Consett, Co Durham, and read History at Trinity Hall Cambridge. She was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in 1982 to study creative writing, and spent her first year at UC Berkeley, where her tutors included Thom Gunn and Robert Pinsky, and her second at Harvard, where her tutor was Seamus Heaney. In the months between she travelled widely, spending formative time in Native American Pueblo and Hopi communities in the South West, and in rural areas of the Southern states. This experience politicised her work, sharpening her sense of the interconnections between people, landscape, history and the natural world. Attempting an academic career after that was a mistake. In 1987 she moved to her grandparents’ house on the Northumberland coast, where she embedded herself in the dwindling traditional fishing community. An awareness of the universal importance of small-scale, sustainable local culture and ecology, which has informed her work ever since, resulted directly from her American travels. Katrina has published several poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books, including The Lost Music, Two Countries and Edge (poems for a planetarium). She received a Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 1989, an Arts Council Writers’ Award in 1993 and an Arts Foundation Award in 2002. She is President of the Northumbrian Language Society and an ambassador for New Networks for Nature. In 1999 she accompanied two Northumbrian shepherd poets to the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada, and in 2014 performed her own work at the Fisher Poets’ Gathering in Oregon.
Last updated: 2nd April 2021
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Professor Nigel Richards (HF 1983-85) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
thought he was heading for pharmaceutical industry (B.Sc., Imperial College, Ph.D., Cambridge University) when he applied for a Harkness Fellowship. After upsetting at least one member of the selection committee, he was surprised to learn that he had been funded to work at Columbia University, New York. He was fortunate to code a software package for computing the structure and properties of organic and biological molecules, subsequently used in numerous laboratories throughout the world. As a result, he took up a lectureship at Southampton where he was among the first group of researchers to combine experiment and theory to address problems at the interface of chemistry and biology. Back in the USA in 1991, he carried out academic research in enzymology at the University of Florida, eventually becoming a Full Professor of Chemistry and a Distinguished Teaching Scholar. After a brief stint as Head of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at IUPUI in Indianapolis (2012-2015), family reasons caused him to return to the UK where he is presently Professor of Biological Chemistry at Cardiff University. He has been recognised for his work on the biosynthesis of the amino acid asparagine, which seems to lie at the heart of many forms of leukemia and tumour metastasis. He is actively involved in developing small molecules with potential use in treating sarcoma. His current research is aimed at re-engineering enzymes that will be useful in obtaining bacteria with expanded, “alien”, genetic alphabets and in the synthesis of novel anti-viral drugs.
Last updated: 13th July 2022
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John Sturrock (HF 1984 – 85) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Law & Criminal Justice, Politics & Public Services
QC stepped out of the legal world in 1984 as a Harkness Fellow to study for a Masters’ Degree in International Law at the University of Pennsylvania. On returning to Scotland, he resumed a career in law at the Scottish Bar but his life had been changed. In the 1990’s, inspired by connections in the US and his knowledge of its legal system, he adapted the leading advocacy skills programme of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy into a Scottish context, establishing an award winning programme for his professional colleagues. Later, he studied negotiation at Harvard under Professor Roger Fisher (of Getting to Yes fame) and, leaving law, embarked on a second career as a mediator and negotiation consultant. He has helped to transform dispute resolution in his home country and elsewhere, and is now a world-recognised figure in the conflict resolution and policy-making field, working with politicians, governments, corporate leaders, Olympic athletes and many others – and mediating in complex disputes in many different contexts, often in the public context. In May 2018, in Edinburgh, John hosted and chaired the annual conference of the International Academy of Mediators, which he regards as a culmination of a journey which started as a Harkness Fellow thirty four years earlier and which gave him the confidence to look outward and across the Atlantic for ideas, learning and friendships.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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The Rt. Hon. Sir Rabinder Singh (HF1985-86) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Law & Criminal Justice
is now a Lord Justice of Appeal. Having studied Law at Trinity College, Cambridge, he did a Master of Laws degree at the University of California at Berkeley. He reports that he Ioved the Bay Area and had a wonderful time travelling with a friend all over the USA, from coast to coast and back again. He particularly enjoyed the great national parks of America advising that there is no better way to see them than by camping. On his return to the UK he was a lecturer in Law at the University of Nottingham for two years before qualifying as a barrister in 1989. Rabinder then practised in London until 2011, having become a QC in 2002. He specialised in public law, human rights and employment law, all areas, he comments, in which his studies in the US had been very influential on his thinking. He was appointed to the High Court in 2011 and to the Court of Appeal in 2017.
Last updated: 14th September 2018
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Alan Rosling (HF 1986-88) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, International Affairs
CBE is an entrepreneur and strategic advisor focused on fast emerging economies, especially India. He co-founded Kiran Energy in Bombay and runs his own consultancy business, Griffin Growth Partners, based in Hong Kong. Alan was a Harkness Fellow in 1986 during which he did an MBA from Harvard Business School. He had previously been a banker with SG Warburg and after the Fellowship returned to the UK to work in a leadership position with Courtaulds Textiles. His subsequent career included the Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street (1991-93), Strategy Director of United Distillers (1993-1997), Chairman, India of the Jardine Matheson Group (1998-2003) and Executive Director of Tata Sons (2004-2009). Alan acts as a Non Executive Director on the Boards of Coats Group Plc, Constellation Alpha Capital Corporation and Vyome Biosciences. He is an advisor to a number of small, growth companies including Peotic, RedGirraffe.com and Insolight.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Professor Mary Ethna Black FRCP FPH (HF 1989-90) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care
is a Northern Irish physician. After attending Rathmore Grammar School, Trinity College Dublin medical school and junior doctor training in Ireland and England, she applied for a Fellowship, intrigued by multi-disciplinary study. Her Master’s Degree at the Harvard School of Public Health concluded with her delivery of the Graduate English Oration at Commencement, and study visits to Alaska, Seattle, US Virgin Islands, and Vermont on public health and environmental protection. In 1991, drawn into the conflict in what was then Yugoslavia, she became WHO Deputy to Sir Donald Acheson, established the medical airlift from the besieged Sarajevo as a Senior Medical Officer with UNHCR, and when pregnant and no longer able to fit a flak jacket—served the humanitarian effort remotely with WHO from Copenhagen. After the war, she established a medical school in Far North Queensland as a Foundation Professor, but returned to Sarajevo and then Belgrade for post-conflict rebuilding. Mary has helped found two successful technology companies, served as a Director of Public Health in London, and was the most senior Public Health Doctor in Scotland during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Her current portfolio career includes Non-Executive Director of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the National Centre for Earth Observation, Trustee of Paintings in Hospitals, Honorary Professor at St Andrews University, Visiting Scholar at the Oxford University Centre for Life writing, and Fellow of Chapter Zero. She publishes essays, fiction and memoir and works on mitigating climate change.
Last updated: 19th January 2023
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Dr Jennifer Dixon (HF 90-91) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Politics & Public Services
CBE, always had three magnetic poles: science, arts and politics. She made herself pursue science (long story) but after five years of medical school and 96 hour working weeks as a junior hospital doctor, by her late 20’s the other two poles began to take over. Jennifer applied a fellowship soon after, aiming to study why such an intelligent and wealthy society in the US was unable to provide decent health care for 17 million of its citizens? Based in New York in part at Montefiore Medical Center and Department of Health Policy at New York University, she studied why federal reform to improve access to care was blocked and what some states had done to bypass this. The answers included age-old debates about the role of federal government, layered on a culture where the ‘social justice thermostat’ was just set too cold (for European tastes). What wasn’t too cold though was the energising informal can-do witty working environment, as opposed to the cardboard hierarchy she was more familiar with in Britain. Back home Jennifer went on to pursue a career in policy analysis, a PhD, working at the King’s Fund, at DH as policy advisor to the CE of the NHS, and she became the CE of the Nuffield Trust and now the Health Foundation. The latter now co-funds the current Harkness fellowship programme.
Last updated: 20th July 2018
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Andrew Farmer (HF 1991 - 92) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths
was a full-time GP in Thame for 17 years when he became one of the first GPs to be awarded a Harkness Fellowship. Based at Duke University, he studied the development of clinical guidelines in the US, looking at how they were being used to guide clinical practice and policy, based on best evidence. Back home, Andrew contributed to initiatives to develop primary care research, including leading his practice to gain the first RCGP’s Research Practice award. After completing a higher degree, in 2001 he joined Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences; he has been Professor of General Practice since 2010. He is now Director of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme, having been Chair of its General Funding Committee (2016 to 2020), and an NIHR Senior Investigator. HTA is NIHR’s largest research funding programme, covering clinical trials and research assessing drugs, tests, therapies and other treatments for potential benefit to patients and the NHS. He has held a number of research management roles within NIHR, has been a member of NICE guideline development groups, a co-lead for the Digital Health and Technology Theme for the Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and a member of NIHR Doctoral Training Award Funding Panels. Championing research that is directly relevant to the NHS and involving public and patients, Andrew’s research focuses on improving the health and wellbeing of people with long-term health conditions, especially diabetes. He works as a GP at St Bartholomew’s Medical Centre, Oxford.
Last updated: 19th January 2021
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Baroness Julia Neuberger (HF 1991-92) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Humanities, Politics & Public Services
was no stranger to challenge when she applied to be a Harkness Fellow for the 1991 intake. Prevented from studying Assyriology at Cambridge (she was refused entry to Turkey, because she was British, and to Iraq, because she was Jewish), she studied Hebrew and was ordained as a rabbi aged 27, the second female rabbi in the UK, but the first to be responsible for a synagogue which she ran until shortly before her fellowship. Immediately before her Fellowship, she spent 2 years at the King’s Fund Institute, looking at Research Ethics Committees (IRBs) in the UK, and published a report which led to limited government and medical royal college action to embed review in law and guidance. During her fellowship she studied healthcare ethics at Harvard, looking at values education for young healthcare professionals, hoping to bring best practice back to the UK. On her return Julia became Chair of Camden and Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust (1992 to 1997) and Chief Executive of the King’s Fund from (1997 – 2004). She was Chancellor of the University of Ulster from 1994–2000, and has been involved in a large number of voluntary and philanthropic roles. Julia broadcasts regularly on Pause for Thought, on BBC Radio 2, and has published widely on matters of ethics, morality and caring for older people and the dying. She chaired the independent review of the Liverpool Care Pathway (for dying patients) and is at present vice chair of the independent review of the Mental Health Act. She was awarded a DBE in 2003 and sits in the House of Lords as an independent. She the Senior Rabbi at the West London Synagogue.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Chris Barnham (1992-93) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Humanities, Politics & Public Services
applied for the Harkness fellowship at Northwestern University, Illinois, to further his understanding of effective schooling in inner cities. A lifelong advocate of education, based on experiences with great teachers in his own life, he became a teacher after his degree at St John’s, Cambridge and PGCE at Goldsmiths. He subsequently joined the Department of Education in 1987, and in his 25-year career there he covered a wide range of policy areas from Early Years, higher education strategy, offender learning and skills and welfare to work, the relationship between education and employment. He spent two years seconded to Southwark Council (2000 – 02), where he devised a new multi-disciplinary approach to youth crime to meet the challenge presented by the November 2000 killing of Damilola Taylor. Having left the civil service in 2013, he was elected in 2014 to Lewisham Council in south London and is now Cabinet member for Children’s Services. In his spare time, Chris is a writer; he has published a variety of fiction short stories, and in 2018 published a well-received science fiction novel, Fifty-One. He also runs a policy and strategy consultancy, specialising in creative development and delivery in education, employment and skills.
Last updated: 13th November 2018
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Robert Barr (1992-93) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Humanities, Politics & Public Services
had recently completed his PhD on Social Information Systems, as he applied for the Harkness fellowship. An urban and social geographer, his academic interests are directly related to the lives of people living in urban areas. For his fellowship he was based at the National Centre for Geographic Information and Analysis at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As an ‘applied’ geographer, he was keen to show how geographical information systems could be used to illuminate social issues. His work showed how much inequality there was, and remains, in the US and on his return he found himself more involved in social issues. He joined one of the Social Exclusion Unit policy action teams and was involved in research that led to the correction of 2001 census, which netted Manchester over £120m in additional revenue support grant. While continuing as a part-time academic, Bob spun his university lab out as a company which helped produce a National Address Register for the 2011 census that avoided the problems of 2001. Since 2006 Bob has served as a Liberal Democrat councillor on Warrington Borough Council and currently leads the opposition with 12 councillors. Bob has served on numerous advisory panels, has held office in the Association for Geographic Information and served on the boards of local Housing Associations. He has won a number of awards for his work and, in 2008, was awarded an OBE for services to Geography.
Last updated: 13th November 2018
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Judy Hargadon (HF 1992-93) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Higher Education
OBE was a CEO of a Health Care Trust when she was awarded her Harkness Fellowship, based in Boston, with the Harvard School of Public Health. Interested in our overly hospital focused health care system, Judy studied lessons that the UK could learn from the US about reducing length of stay. Her research into innovative practice took her to Minnesota, Miami, New York, Seattle and Los Angeles – as well as to many health care establishments in Boston. On her return to England, Judy championed and led change projects initially in local neighbourhood care for primary and community services, then later for primary care across London, for complex and sensitive commissioning decisions, and later still the effective use of workforce in the NHS – the Changing Workforce programme. Her last full time role saw her sorting out school meals across England, following the Jamie Oliver expose. Judy was awarded an OBE for services to children’s welfare in 2011. Judy came across the first Take Our Daughters to Work Day when she was a fellow. She and her husband brought it back to the UK and she chaired the trustees for a number of years. She is a member of Council (the governing body) of the University of Exeter, NED for Restorative Solutions CIC, Trustee of the Harkness Fellows Association and volunteers with charities that support struggling families.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Sir David Bell (HF 1993-94) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Higher Education, Politics & Public Services
was Assistant Director of Education at Newcastle City Council prior to embarking on his Harkness Fellowship year, later returning to Newcastle to become Director of Education and Libraries. David’s interest in education policy making, and a general desire to spend time understanding more about the United States, led him to apply for a ‘Harkness’. He was based in Atlanta, Georgia and worked at Georgia State University, with some time based in the Office of the State Superintendent of Schools. Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading since 1 January 2012, David has held a number of major posts across the English education system. He was Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education for six years. Prior to that, he was Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools in England for nearly four years. David began his career as a primary school teacher and later became a head teacher. Between 1 August 2017 and 31 July 2019, David is Vice President England and Northern Ireland for Universities UK (UUK) as well as a member of the UUK board. In addition, David is a board member of Reading UK CIC, a trustee and advisory board member of the Higher Education Policy Institute, a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a non-executive director of the Law Commission. David was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 2011.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Terry Kemple (HF 1993-94) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care
had been a full time NHS general practitioner In Bristol for 10 years when he applied for a Harkness Fellowship. A friend who worked at Cumberland Lodge where Harkness fellows held conferences suggested he applied as it fitted with his interests in challenging complacencies, making improvements and valuing sabbaticals. He was based at Harvard in 1993/94 and studied ‘How to improve the performance of physicians’ in particular the recertification of doctors. On his return he continued in full time general practice and had leading roles in teaching, training, research, management, appraisals, building premises, starting a GP Out-of-Hours cooperative, gaining Fellowship of RCGP by assessment, achieving the RCGP Quality Practice Award three times, starting a multi-practice federation, and starting the Green Impact for Health in General Practice project. In his final sabbatical, he explored ‘how to find and spread best practice faster’. His suggestion was ‘find yourself a better network’. He was elected president of Royal College of General Practitioners 2015-17, and was an unsuccessful candidate in the President of the Royal College of Physicians election in 2018. He continues to lead the RCGP’s green/sustainability programme including the Green Impact for health project.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Justin Russell (HF 1993-94) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care
, currently Chief Inspector of Probation, completed degrees at Oxford (St John’s) and Bristol before an early career in social research in the Home Office. He was based at UC Berkeley looking at substance abuse treatment programmes for offenders across the United States. Arriving back in England he came up with the idea of the Drug Treatment and Testing Order (DTTO), based on the Drug Court model he had seen in the US, which enabled judges in England and Wales to sentence drug related offenders to a programme of treatment and testing as an alternative to a prison sentence. This became law in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, backed up with over £50m a year of funding and by the end of 2003, over 18,000 DTTOs had been given out by UK courts. Justin’s Harkness year was to be the beginning of a 25 year career influencing criminal justice and home affairs policy in a range of settings such as the Home office, No 10, and DWP, and covering a wide range of topics; violent crime, asylum, gang and youth violence, domestic abuse, offender policy, disability and employment, aging and pensions, as well as overall Home Affairs in his time as special adviser to two Home Secretaries (Jack Straw and John Reid) and as a Senior Policy Adviser to Tony Blair in the No. 10 Policy Unit. Justin was Director General for Prisons and Probation Policy at the Ministry of Justice from 2016 to the end of 2018.
Last updated: 19th February 2021
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Simon Stevens (HF 1994-95) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Politics & Public Services
is CEO of NHS England, which leads the NHS’ work nationally to improve health and ensure high quality care for all. He is accountable to Parliament for over £100 billion of annual Health Service funding. Simon joined the NHS through its Graduate Training Scheme in 1988. As a frontline NHS manager he subsequently led acute hospitals, mental health and community services, primary care and health commissioning in the North East of England, London and the South Coast. He also served seven years as the Prime Minister’s Health Adviser at 10 Downing Street, and as policy adviser to successive Health Secretaries at the Department of Health. Simon also spent a decade working internationally at UnitedHealth Group, including as its Medicare CEO and as president of its global health division, leading health services in the United States, Europe, Brazil, India, China, Africa, and the Middle East. Simon was a Harkness Fellow at Columbia University, New York and working at the New York City Health Department. He is the first Harness Fellow to subsequently become a director of the Commonwealth Fund, on whose board he now sits. Simon was born in Birmingham, and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford University and Strathclyde University, Glasgow. He is married with two school-age children, and volunteers as a director of the Commonwealth Fund, a leading international health charity. He has also been a trustee of the Kings Fund and the Nuffield Trust and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Liz Sayce (HF 1995-96) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care
OBE was Policy Director of Mind in the 1990s, when Britain’s first disability rights law was about to come into force. She wanted to learn from the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed 5 years earlier, particularly in relation to breaking down discrimination faced by people living with mental health problems – at that time more of a taboo subject than it is today. Based at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington DC, and with links to the University of Virginia, Liz learnt from advocates, academics and experts. The Fellowship resulted in a book – from Psychiatric Patient to Citizen (Palgrave Macmillan, updated 2016). On returning, Liz was a member of the Ministerial Disability Rights Task Force (1997-9), which shaped policy and law for the next decade. Her roles included Director of Policy and Communications at the new Disability Rights Commission (2000-7) and Chief Executive of Disability Rights UK (and one of its legacy organisations) (2007-17). Other roles have included Commissioner, UK Commission for Employment and Skills; Non-Executive Board Member, Care Quality Commission; Trustee of Stonewall; and Member of the Social Security Advisory Committee and Healthwatch England Committee. She led an independent review for Government on employment support for disabled people in 2011. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Kent in 2014.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Aminatta Forna (HF 1996-97) 1990s, All Harkness Stories, Humanities, Journalism, Broadcast, Films & TV
OBE was a Harkness Fellow at Berkeley, California. Before she went to the States she was a current affairs and arts reporter at the BBC, where she had worked since 1989. She rejoined the BBC on her return to the UK to host a programme on European politics. She left in 1999 to write full time. Aminatta was born in Scotland, raised in Sierra Leone and Great Britain and spent periods of her childhood in Iran, Thailand and Zambia. She is the award-winning author of the novels The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and the memoir, The Devil that Danced on the Water. Her most recent novel, Happiness, was published in 2018. She has a world-wide following and her books have been translated into over twenty languages. In 2003 Aminatta established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in a village in Sierra Leone. The charity has also run a number of projects in the spheres of adult education, sanitation and maternal health. Aminatta is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Award from Yale University, has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award 2011, the Liberaturpreis in Germany and the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize. She has been a finalist for the Neustadt Prize for Literature, the Orange Prize for Fiction, the IMPAC Award and the Warwick Prize. She was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours in 2017. She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Dr Claire Lemer (HF 2004-05) 2000s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care
was a paediatric trainee prior to the Harkness Fellowship. Seeing medication safety challenges as part of her clinical experience Claire sought to better understand the research and policy context to patient safety. Claire undertook her fellowship in Boston, at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, researching the role of paediatric computerisation in medication safety. Since her return Claire has finished her paediatric training and practices as general Paediatrician at the Evelina, London, part of Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital. She combines this with policy work for NHSE, as the Associate National Clinical Director for CYP and Transition. Alongside this Claire is engaged in developing integrated care systems for children as part of an RCT. Claire is about to start as Clinical Director for Medicine, at the Evelina. Claire is also actively engaged in the Jewish world as a trustee of the largest synagogal body in the UK and education as a chair of governors of a primary school.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Anna Dixon (HF 2005-06) 2000s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Politics & Public Services
was a Lecturer in European Health Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Researcher with the European Observatory on Health Care Systems prior to the Harkness Fellowship. She had also worked at the Department of Health as a policy analyst in the Strategy Unit where she led on issues such as patient choice in the NHS. Her interest in self-management of long term conditions and patient decision-making led her to undertake her fellowship at the University of Oregon working with Professor Judith Hibbard on patient activation, informed choice and consumer directed health plans. On return Anna took up a position as Deputy Director and then Director of Policy at The King’s Fund where she led their work to influence NHS and social care in England. More recently Anna went back to the Department of Health where she was Director of Strategy and Chief Analyst. In September 2015 Anna became Chief Executive of Ageing Better, a new charitable foundation working to change society so more people can enjoy later life. Anna is also a non-Executive Director of Helpforce an initiative to unlock the potential of volunteers in the NHS. She has a PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Last updated: 20th July 2018
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Richard Gleave (HF 2007-08) 2000s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care
was the NHS Performance Director before becoming a Harkness Fellow based at Kaiser Permanente and University of California, Berkeley, looking a performance improvement in Integrated Delivery Systems across the US. After working at DH and South of England SHA, he became Deputy Chief Executive at Public Health England in 2013. PHE is the national public health agency which provides evidence based advice to national and local government, the NHS and the public, and delivers specialist public health services to protect and improve the public’s health. He is also a Senior Associate Tutor at Oxford University, where he is undertaking a D Phil as well as teaching postgraduate students in policy and management.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Dr Ted Adams (HF 2014-15 ) 2010s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care
MBChB MSc MRCOG FFFMLM undertook his fellowship at Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute in Oakland, California. As an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Ted spent the year fully involved with the policy and improvement teams at Kaiser Permanente, translating some policy from the Affordable Care Act into measurable clinical policies and examining “joy in work” for clinicians. The Harkness project was centred around patient-centred care in maternity services. Ted wanted to put his learning into practice and maintained his clinical and operational focus on his return to the UK. He was inspired by the effort Kaiser Permanente put into its electronic health system and is now the Chief Clinical Information Officer at his NHS trust in the North West of England. In addition to his NHS role, he works for Kaleidoscope Health and Care where he can indulge his love of practical health policy. He is also a trustee of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund and Chief Medical Officer of the UK’s Pony Club.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Dr Matthew Harris (HF 2014-15 ) 2010s, All Harkness Stories, Health & Social Care, Higher Education
DPhil MBBS BSc MSc PGCertEd FFPH is a Clinical Senior Lecturer in Public Health, jointly appointed between the Department of Primary Care and Public Health, and the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, and he is an Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine in the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Before the Harkness Fellowship, Matthew worked in global public health and research and for several years as a Primary Care physician in Brazil, as a WHO Polio Consultant in Ethiopia and as an HIV Technical Consultant in Mozambique. He then completed a PhD at Oxford University, became a Public Health Consultant in the NHS and was a Global Health Advisor to the UK Department of Health. During his Harkness Fellowship he was based at New York University researching ‘Reverse Innovation’, particularly how to unlock the creative potential of developing countries to benefit developed country health systems. Matthew is now co-director of the Masters in Public Health programme at Imperial College London and an Educational Supervisor for Public Health Registrars in the NHS. He has also been appointed an Honorary Advisor to the Tropical Health Education Trust, and has been invited to be a Commissioner on the special inquiry on diffusion of innovation in healthcare and public services, by Baroness Greengross.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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Maddy Phipps-Taylor (HF 2014-15) 2010s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Health & Social Care, Politics & Public Services
applied to the Harkness Fellowship programme while working as a Senior Policy Advisor to PM David Cameron at No 10 Downing Street. She had, at that point, experience as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and a Civil Servant following an education in Engineering at Oxford. For her Fellowship she was based at UC Berkley in California, researching Accountable Care Organisations (a new healthcare delivery model launched as part of ‘Obamacare’). She travelled the length and breadth of the USA, covering 22 States often with her husband Matt. Her research was published in the Milbank Quarterly, New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs. On return to the UK she transitioned into Healthcare Software and now is the Director of Strategy at Allocate Software – the world’s leading healthcare workforce management software provider.
Last updated: 26th May 2018
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